Deep Water: Teaching Writing Inside Prison

In March 2008 I began an internship with the Hero’s Journey Workshop at Monroe Correctional Complex in Monroe, WA. Twice a month I drive an hour and half one way to talk with a group of prisoners about how they might be able to see themselves as the hero of their own story. We talk and we write and together we grow. The questions these men ask of themselves and of life are the same questions those of us who are supposedly “free” ought to be asking. If, that is, we mean it when we say we want the world to be better. Here you’ll read mostly about my experiences behind the walls, what I’m learning about teaching the craft of writing, what the Hero’s Journey Workshop is all about and what I’m learning about myself. I will talk in little detail about the men I work with, though I do hope to get permission to publish some of their work and in that way you will get to know them. It is all too easy to forget that these men have a right to privacy just like the rest of us, so I will expose myself on these pages, but I will never expose them.

Thank you for visiting and being interested in this work. For those of you who are writers you know the real story is often in the shadows and you have to be brave enough to go toward it. For those of you who are not writers, may you find here a side of the story about prison that maybe you’ve never read before. May we all find our hearts a little more opened.